Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Our series of lunches and dinners is one of the highlights of our
year, giving us a chance not only to showcase our wines, but also to
share the peace and beauty of Waterfall Bay, Michael Seresin's
Marlborough home.

The building we use as a restaurant
was once a boat shed, but has been decorated and adapted to provide the
perfect venue for this event. Tucked into the bush, with cheeky wekas
ready to pounce on any unguarded food at the kitchen door, it is a
secluded and unique spot and an easy place with which to fall in love.

Nic Poelaert

Our chosen chefs often prepare incredible and complex dishes for our
guests, but at the heart of Waterfall Bay is true simplicity - the
simplicity of a meal and wine shared, of conversation and a convivial
atmosphere, of indulging the senses and having a pleasurable time in
good company.

If you would like to join us in February
2015, there are still tickets available. Our chef this year is Nic
Poelaert, currently head chef at Brooks Melbourne and a Frenchman with a
passion for small producers and local ingredients, as well as a flair
for design!

Tickets are $300, including return boat travel from Picton to Waterfall Bay and a five course menu with matching wines.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Sometimes, however hard you try and however much you work with nature and with the seasons, sometimes things just don’t work out as you imagine. Sometimes you are, quite simply, at the mercy of the elements.

Up towards the top of our Raupo Vineyard - mercifully frostfree

This season so far has been particularly and peculiarly tough going, with a huge water deficit across the region due to the driest July-October in 85 years, consistently high winds and a long and drawn out frost season.

Frost is the enemy of young shoots and developing flowers on the vine, and all wine producers work hard to mitigate the effects of below freezing temperatures after bud burst. To this end, they use whatever tools are at their disposal, be they frost fans, heat pots, irrigation or helicopters. Without these tools, the frost can kill the tender new growth and prevent the vine from developing properly or producing fruit. When this happens, it can be devastating, as it will not only effect the current year, but most likely the following one also. It is a bitter pill swallow.

Frost burned vines

Our policy of pruning late usually ensures we miss the damage that can be caused by early frost events, and a combination of valerian tea, frost fans and helicopters had meant that we had avoided too much damage during most of the cold periods this season. However, sadly a vicious and completely unforecast frost hit our Raupo vineyard in the Omaka Valley on the morning of 20th November and has left us facing a scene of partial devastation. Once flourishing and growing vines have been left stunted and browned (frost-burned) across large swathes of the vineyard, creating a visible pattern of destruction that exactly maps the movement of the cold air across the land during that night. It is quite a sight to behold.

Happily around 50% of the vineyard is unaffected, either due to the angles of the slopes where the vines are planted or indeed because parts are protected by frost fans – and mercifully this includes our best Pinot and Chardonnay sites. Naturally we would love the whole vineyard to be protected, but alas at $55K per frost fan, they are not an easy thing to budget for in harder times and since the GFC, cost savings have been part and parcel of business for everyone in the wine industry.

It is a painful thing to look at so many vines in such an unhappy condition, but we remain philosophical. There was nothing we could really have done to avoid this situation, and so we have to just have to move on. While we know that the majority of the damaged vines will not now produce fruit for the 2015 vintage, we will be working hard with the vine nonetheless, shoot thinning, re-pruning and managing them carefully to ensure that there is as little impact on their fruitfulness in 2016 as possible.

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

As people who live and work on the land, we are aware of the continuous change and development there is in our farm and estate across the seasons. At this, the start of summer, everything is growing and changing: buds burst, shoots rise, flowers form; lambs begin to grow fat on the pastureland; birds sing in the skies above the vines and everything is gathering itself for the summer.

It somehow seems right then, at this time of growth and development in our land that we should be growing our team at the same time. To that end therefore we are very pleased to welcome Dianne Marshall as our Global Sales Manager.

Dianne joins us from a role with another wine producer in Australia, and comes with a wealth of ideas, experience and enthuasiasm. We are very much looking forward to working with her and getting to know her over the coming months and years.